The German Justice frees the former Catalan president

USPA NEWS - The German Court that had to decide on the extradition to Spain of the former Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, rejected on Thursday the crime of rebellion of which the Spanish politician is accused and ordered his release on bail of 75,000 Euros (91,889.13 USD). The Prosecutor's Office, opposed to the judge's decision, sees no margin to appeal the judge's decision.

With the decision of the Territorial Court of Schleswig-Holstein, the former Catalan president, accused by the Spanish Supreme Court of rebellion and misappropriation of public money, could only be extradited for the latter crime and tried only by him. However, Spanish legal experts said on Thursday that it is not certain that the Court will accept the embezzlement of public money, after rejecting Spain's main argument against the pro-independence politician. According to the Territorial Court of Schleswig-Holstein, the crime of rebellion imputed by the Supreme Court of Spain to Carles Puigdemont is "inadmissible" with criteria of the German Criminal Code, because this rule only considers violence that manages to bend the institutions of a country.

The decision of the German Court admits that Puigdemont was the instigator of the riots registered on October 1, 2017, in Catalonia, when the illegal referendum on Catalan independence was held, but he refuses to be the material author of the riots. However, he denies that in Spain human rights are not respected and there is no democracy, as Puigdemont and his environment maintain. The former Catalan president, who will be released from prison on Friday, must appear weekly at the court and is banned from leaving German territory until there is a final decision on his extradition.

For the lawyer of Puigdemont, the decision of the German Court is "a success for our client, who always expressed his confidence in the German Justice." If the Court rejects the extradition of the former Catalan president, the only possibility left to the Spanish Justice system to prosecute him will be his detention on Spanish territory. And that could be delayed a lot, since Puigdemont is well installed in Belgium and moves freely through other European countries.